Q & A with Coach Robert Weiner
Throughout the course of the football team’s history at Plant High, there has been one man at the helm of the program, Coach Robert Weiner, who has compiled 4 state titles during his tenure. Despite being the football coach, Weiner has a back story that not too many people know about.
Q : How did you get into coaching? When did you start?
A : Well, I actually started 29 years ago. I started when I returned back to the high school that I went to, which was Jesuit. My mentor back when I was a student at Jesuit, his name was Bill Minahan, asked me, ‘do you want to be a cross country coach or a football coach?’ I asked if I could take some time to think about it and he said, ‘nope! I need you to tell me right now.’ I then said, ‘ok I’ll be a football coach.’ I really had no idea what I getting into or what it was all about, but that’s how it started.
Q : How has coaching football affected you life?
A : Well its pretty much consumed my life. When you are coaching football its all encompassing. The one thing that’s interesting about football is that, in some jobs, you finish a task and say, ‘I’ve finished the task,’ yet in football you might finish the task but its never the end of the overall task, there is always more to do. There is always more film you can watch, there is always a better way to prepare you players. There is always something more. There never is a cap space where you say, ‘I’ve done that and I’ve completed that.’ First of all, just time wise, in order to do the way I think is the right way, its something that you really have to put yourself into, but I think most of all, the more important answer to that question is that, football coaching is like any of the great vocations or jobs that involves really, really, really profound interaction with other people. I guess for so long is certainly not for the money, certainly not for the work hours, but its because I love the interaction with young people and I love watching them grow and develop. I love seeing somebody put their mind to a task and then do the work that it takes, then seeing them have the opportunity to be successful or to fail, and to learn become better people because of it.
Q : Is there a certain person who has had a certain influence on you?
A: I would say probably two. I would say coach Bill Minahan, he was actually a coach at Plant back in the 50’s and the early 60’s but he was my coach at Jesuit. He was a legendary coach, the first coach in Hillsborough County to win 100 games at one school. He was the only coach in Hillsborough County to win state championship, other than Blake, before we did it at Plant, and he did it at Jesuit. He was a long time coach there and he impacted me in ways. Both by his attitude and work ethic, his loyalty, enthusiasm. His assistant, Dominick Ciao was a guy I was an assistant coach under for 15 years. He’s now the head coach over at Berkley Prep. He’s had a tremendous influence on the way that I coach, just coaching side by side with him for years. He’s had a great influence on the way I coach and the way I treat people.
Q: What is the recruiting process like for a head coach?
A : College recruiting is really all encompassing. There are a lot of things that come into it. First of all, its just moderating your own players, to try to make them have realistic expectations of what they could possibly do in moving on. The worst thing is having unrealistic expectations, and then having those expectations not be met. The first thing is just making good evaluations and being honest with your players and your player’s parents and letting them know where there might be some possibilities for them. But then there’s putting together film and information in terms of academics, and then getting that out to coaches. So the recruiting process is a huge part of what we do. There’s a lot of coaches that just players and parents do that on our own. That’s not the way that we feel about it. We feel like our players give us everything that they have, and we want to give back to them in return as much we possibly can, so the recruiting process is obliviously important to many of our players’ next step in life.
Q : What is your favorite memory from coaching here at Plant?
A : That’s a tough question. We’ve had a lot of amazing memories. I think most people would quickly say four state championships and the moments after that, the celebration. But I would say there’s probably the many more moments I remember, just kind of way smaller moments, more intimate moments, in which players and coaches have been affected by what we’ve done on and off the fi eld. Players that come back and reflect upon that years later, as to how football played an important role in their lives.
Q : For you, what do you consider success?
A : We have a mission statement on our team, so I think like any corporation, the mission statement determines the direction of potential success. Our mission statement is, we want to enthusiastically work and relentlessly pursue the best we can be as a person, as a student, as a player, and as a teammate, for the sake of our Plant Football family. If you look at that, you’ll recognize that it says nothing about an opponent and nothing about winning games, but it says everything about pursing in a way that has great enthusiasm and great figure to it, pursing the best we can be in all the areas we can be in our lives. Its not necessarily measured by wins and losses and championships.